New River Birding & Nature Festival!

The world famous New River Gorge bridge, as seen from Long Point on a misty May morning.

It's high time to get spring's schedule straight, and high time I plugged the New River Birding & Nature Festival! This event is centered on one of North America's great biological hotspots, the ancient New River at Fayetteville, West Virginia. This year's dates are April 28th to May 3rd, and if you want to start spring off with a bang, make this scene. The festival has no peer when it comes to beauty of the scenery, biological diversity, and quality of the guides and speakers (possibly excepting your narrator). Following are some photos of what you can expect to see; for the complete festival low-down, CLICK HERE.

A rushing stream cuts through Babcock State Park, one of our many field trip destinations. We find many species of interesting birds here, and lots of cool plants, including pink lady's-slipper orchids. There are NO bad field trips, and whether you attend for part of the week, or the entire week, you'll end up with an impressive species list.

This slope, just uphill from the previous shot, is carpeted with snarls of great rhododendron overtopped by eastern hemlock and yellow birch. Black-throated Blue Warblers breed at this exact spot, and not far away and in similar haunts nests that most coveted of West Virginia warblers, the Swainson's Warbler.

I've been guiding at this festival for the better part of a decade, and once the organizers (Dave! Geoff! Keith! Rachel!) figured out that I knew plants, I drew the plum field trip assignment ever since: Cranberry Glades! This jewel of a spot is nestled high in Monongahela National Forest, and is a naturalist's dream. The red spruce and cranberry bog is full of boreal birds near their southernmost nesting limits.

Cranberry Glades isn't just famous for its birds. Indeed, the complete name of our target area is the Cranberry Glades Botanical Area, and with just cause. The bog is full of interesting and rare flora, such as this tiny northern coralroot orchid. Larger showier fare includes Bartram's serviceberry and painted trillium.

This mountaintop field has awed many a birder. It is filled with courting Bobolinks, and their bubbly R2-D2 songs are especially inspiring given the grandeur of the scene.

When the Cranberry Glades trip is done with the bog and boardwalk, we head off down the mountaintop highway. This group was especially happy because we had just seen, heard, and studied a territorial Mourning Warbler. It was but one of about 27 species of warblers you might see, including Cerulean and Golden-winged warblers.

Another specialty of the spruce-clad mountains around Cranberry Glades is the local population of Red Crossbills. They breed up there, but as is typical of crossbills, they are nomadic and one never knows where they'll be from year to year. But the chances of finding some are decent. Even if we don't, you'll experience a nearly overwhelming immersion in nature, made comprehensible by good people-friendly guides who really know the area.

I hope you can make it, and CLICK HERE for registration information.

If you want to read more firsthand accounts and see plenty of photos, type in New River in the search box in the upper lefthand corner of this page. I've made many posts about this festival in past years.

Black Skimmer, skimming

A Black Skimmer slices the water in a Florida wetland. I made this photo in 2011, and always liked it, in part because I really like this species. Black Skimmers have an elongated lower mandible, and are adept at doing just what their name suggests - skimming low over still waters, cutting the surface with their specialized bill, and harvesting whatever small piscine life is unlucky enough to be in the path. The bird is like a feathered crop duster of doom to the aquatic crowd, dropping from the sky and plowing a trail of destruction through the shallows.

We've never had a Black Skimmer in Ohio, and I don't expect that we will. But if one were to turn up here, now, it'd hurt its beak. Most all of our water is still in ice, and that doesn't make for good skimming. Here in the North it is the winter that won't end. It is 16 F as I write, and tomorrow's high will be 18 F, dropping to a low of 6 tomorrow night. For the most part, low temperatures such as those are forecast for the next week or so.

Perhaps if I offer up this Black Skimmer as a photographic propitiation to the gods of summer, heat, and sun, they will make winter relinquish its hold.

Skunk-cabbage is up, spring is here

I post on this subject nearly every year, and make no apologies for redundancy. Come mid-February, our first true wildflower springs from the mire and goes about blooming in its own inconspicuous way. I am fortunate that I have a patch of Skunk-cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus, just ten minutes from my house. So, come sometime in the midst of our second month, I make my way to the undistinguished piece of mire pictured above. Donning muck boots, I plod in, camera in hand.

I was at the cabbage patch last Saturday morning, and was not disappointed. A great number of the odd arums had thrust forth, and many of the liver-spotted spathes were fully developed. There isn't much variation in blooming time. You can pretty well be assured of finding the skunks in bloom, at least at this patch, in the second or third week of February. This winter has been brutal, with lots of cold and extended snow and ice cover. Had I gone here the prior weekend, much of the quagmire probably would have been covered in a sheet of snow. Nonetheless, the Skunk-cabbage would have been pushing out of the muck even then. This plant is thermogenic, or capable of producing its own heat. That's a huge advantage when trying to get a big jumpstart on spring. I've written in more detail about the curious workings of Skunk-cabbage HERE.

By looking down into the gap in the spathe, we can see the club-shaped spadix. It is covered with very simple, tiny yellowish flowers. And there they are: The first true wildflowers of spring. Nothing grandiose, like a trillium, bluebell, or wood poppy, but these little flowers precede the better known and more conspicuous wildflowers by a month or more.

 

I dipped my finger into one of the fleshy hoods and brushed a spadix. And there's the proof of flowering, Skunk-cabbage pollen. Not only is this pollen evidence of the skunker's flowering, it is indisputable proof that spring has sprung - a far better and more accurate marker than the prognostications of some groundhog.

Great Horned Owl

Photo: Gary Meszaros

A big female Great Horned Owl stands sentinel at the entrance to her nest site, a broken snag. Gary Meszaros took this photo the other day near Cleveland, and (obviously) gave me permission to share it. This is without doubt one of the coolest images of this species that I've seen. To see more of Gary's work, CLICK HERE.

Great Horned Owls are surprisingly common, and no doubt lurk near you. They are the nocturnal analogs to Red-tailed Hawks, so if you see the latter chances are good the big owls are around, too. In fact, the most common nest site for these owls, in these parts, are the nests of Red-tailed Hawks. If the larger more powerful owls decide to appropriate a hawk nest, tough luck to the rusty-tailed raptor. A distant second regarding nest sites are broken-off tree snags, such as in Gary's photo. A small percentage of owls will modify squirrel drays for nests. A dray is a leafy arboreal nest of tree squirrels. Occasionally an owl pair will commandeer a Great Blue Heron nest, creating an uneasy alliance when the herons return to their rookery.

The big owls commence nesting in the midst of winter. Eggs are commonly laid between mid-January and mid-February, and at least some nests will be full of owlets by now. The downy white owlets grow with startling rapidity, and before long resemble fuzzy grocery sacks. Their parents ply them with all manner of food - Great Horned Owls have the most diverse diet of any of our owls. Even skunks are not off limits.

The Great Horned Owl is one of my favorite birds, and I've amassed a significant body of unforgettable memories involving these "winged tigers" (in the words of Ernest Thompson Seton). Once, while cruising a back road in Ross County in the darkness, I rounded a corner and there was a Great Horned Owl in the middle of the road. It had a freshly killed rabbit. The owl ran me through with its piercing yellow gaze, and refused to leave its kill. Finally, the prey being too much to get airborne, it stumble-flapped its victim up the road bank and into the bush.

Another time, I was passing through the heart of the Ohio State University's campus, at 15th Avenue and High Street, not far from downtown Columbus, when the giant shape of a horned owl whisked ghostlike through the intersection. Some owls are quite the urbanites, and woe to any rat that crosses their path.

Several years ago, a Great Horned Owl nest was discovered mere feet from busy Cleveland Avenue in Columbus. It had appropriated a Red-tailed Hawk nest high in a silver maple on the grounds of St. Ann's Hospital. Word got out, the Columbus Dispatch featured the owl in its pages, and the rush began. The hospital ended up cordoning off a big chunk of parking lot to accommodate the throngs of admirers. Thousands of people must have seen that fierce-looking owl as she sit high above, occasionally deigning to glance down at the assembled rabble with her glaring eyes. In spite of her innate ability to make us feel less than, everyone was thoroughly charmed by the animal.

We've come a long way in our attitudes towards high-end predators such as the Great Horned Owl. It wasn't that long ago that owls and hawks were routinely shot on sight, sometimes to the point of utter elimination. Less than a century ago, it would have been very hard to find a Great Horned Owl in the region where Meszaros made this photo. Nearly all of them had been shot out.

Keep a close eye on hawk and heron nests in your travels. Sooner or later, you'll see the telltale ear tufts of a Great Horned Owl sticking over the top, or the big pieces of white fuzz which are the owlets.

Sea duck invasion: Why?

The view from Deer Creek last Sunday morning; air temperature a frosty 14 degrees. That's the Deer Creek dam in the backdrop, which impounds a large reservoir in south-central Ohio. We've had a brutally cold winter, and there are very few streams or lakes with open water.

Moving upstream a bit, we come to the tail waters of the dam. Turbulent water flushed through the dam's portals keeps open a stretch of water, and that attracts ducks. Some of the best birding of late has come from streams immediately downstream of dams, including this one.

I arrived on the scene to find about 50 fowl loafing just below the dam. A smattering of Mallards, a male Canvasback, a group of Red-breasted Mergansers, and these boys. Two Redheads mix with a species that should perk the ears of central Ohio birders, the Greater Scaup. Normally, even in midwinter, it is the much less hardy Lesser Scaup that is the default scaup, but this winter we've had plenty of Greaters appearing at spots such as this. In fact, there were about twenty scaup at this spot during my visit, and all of them were Greater Scaup.

Even though Lesser and Greater Scaup look very similar and can be confusing to separate, the two species are apples to oranges. Greaters are far hardier, and are normally rare to casual at best away from the open waters of Lake Erie. Lesser Scaup winter commonly to the Gulf Coast and beyond - I have this species on my Guatemala list. While Greater Scaup are not technically "sea ducks", they are the closest thing to them in the genus Aythya. Most Greaters winter in salt water along the coasts, although a fair number ride out winter on the Great Lakes.

Photo: Bruce Satta

Bruce Satta took this gorgeous image of a Long-tailed Duck (Oldsquaw) on the tailwaters below the Deer Creek dam several days prior to my visit. I was really hoping it, or another, would be there but no such luck. But as the (former) Oldsquaw is central to this story, I wanted to use a photo of one of the central Ohio birds, and Bruce was kind enough to allow the use of his image.

Long-tailed Ducks have also been turning up in large (for Ohio) numbers away from Lake Erie. Like the Greater Scaup, this sea duck is most often seen on our Great Lake, and sightings inland are few and far between. This winter, it seems that any area with open water might produce one or a few.

These Arctic-nesting ducks are extraordinary divers, and are capable of propelling themselves to depths of 200 feet or more. Mussels are a favored prey.

Photo: Kirk Hewitt

In tandem with all of the inland Long-tailed Duck reports have been a raft of White-winged Scoter sightings. This astonishing shot was made by Kirk Hewitt at Lake Isabella in Hamilton County. The bird struggles with a massive fish (it recalls THIS POST), but like the Long-tailed Duck, mussels are the preferred foodstuff of White-winged Scoters.

An interesting facet of the recent scoter invasion is that all, or nearly all reports are of White-winged Scoters. Not Black or Surf scoters. Why might that be? One important difference between the three species involves feeding habits. Blacks and Surfs are relative shallow divers, typically foraging in waters less than 30 feet deep. White-winged Scoters tend to dive to much deeper depths, often feeding on submerged mussel beds in waters 65 feet deep, and deeper. Thus, the white-wingeds can hang out in deeper waters than their scoter brethren, and often do.

Long-tailed Ducks and White-winged Scoters have invaded inland areas throughout the eastern U.S., not just Ohio. To get a feel for the extent of this sea duck incursion, CHECK OUT eBird.

Because of the extraordinarily cold winter, most all of our water is frozen. This is the view of Deer Creek Reservoir, taken from the top of the dam. Nary a trace of open water. The same can be said of nearly all of our lakes, including the great Lake Erie. That's why the few places with open water, such as dam tail waters and parts of big rivers such as the Great Miami and Scioto are often packed with ducks.

Even in a cold winter in which Lake Erie appears to have frozen solid, it really hasn't. I took this shot in February 2010, miles offshore from Cleveland, during a waterbird survey flight. From the shore, it would seem that the lake was a giant ice cube. However, there are normally lots of open leads, some extensive, and these openings are often packed with waterfowl. I suspect one would find such openings on the other Great Lakes as well, although I haven't had firsthand experience flying over those in the winter.

This ice cover map from the Great Lakes Environmental Research Labratory shows the current extent of Great Lakes ice. Excepting lakes Michigan and Ontario, they are frozen nearly solid. Apparently Lake Erie is about 96% frozen. In short, there are probably few if any open leads to support birds, as there would be in a "normal" winter, even one with lots of ice cover.

Image courtesy U.S. EPA

This U.S. EPA map shows the various water depths of Lake Erie. The majority of the lake ranges from 50 to well over 100 feet in depth (the average depth is 62 feet). From my experience, the deeper (blue) portions are those most likely to support open leads in shifting ice, and that's where the birds are in iced-over winters. And there are undoubtedly plenty of beds of tasty nonnative zebra and quagga mussels down on the bottom; a relatively new (first found in 1988) food source that seems to have lured more sea ducks such as scoters and Long-tailed Ducks to spend time, and even overwinter, on Lake Erie.

Remember, both the Long-tailed Duck and White-winged Scoter are champion divers, routinely submerging to depths of 60 feet or more to feed. Mussel beds in the deeper portions of the lake would not be off-limits to them, although they might be avoided by lesser divers such as Black and Surf scoters.

I wonder if our major inland incursion of Long-tailed Ducks and White-winged Scoters is related to Lake Erie's (and perhaps lakes Huron and Superior) nearly complete covering of ice. If this is the case, it would show how much we have yet to learn about the lake. Because of the nearly inaccessible nature of open leads in Lake Erie ice, we know very little about the numbers and species of ducks that may overwinter on them. This brutal and nearly complete freeze may have forced these birds off the lake (and perhaps other Great Lakes) and into more easily observed situations. And given us a window into the numbers of Long-tailed Ducks and White-winged Scoters (and Greater Scaup) that might be wintering out there.

Snowy Owls get major coverage in newspaper

It's nice to see a bird species garnering more ink in the papers than most politicians. Today's Columbus Dispatch featured an article on Snowy Owls, peppered with photos from a number of Ohio photographers. The images are stunning, and a must-see. Read the article RIGHT HERE.

Snowy Owls have garnered lots of press this winter. Their irruption into the Midwest and eastern U.S. has been nothing short of phenomenal, and of such a scope that probably no one alive would have remembrances of a comparable event. It would probably be necessary to go back to the 1920's to recall an irruption of similar scale.

The Ohio total, insofar as I know, stands at 165 owls in 56 counties. New reports have tapered off, but still trickle in and I'm sure we'll learn of more. Many of these reports have come well after the fact, as observers learn that someone is interested in sightings after reading an article such as the one cited in this post. My updated map is below, and shows an interesting but expected distributional pattern. Owl reports are mostly lacking from the southeastern third of Ohio. That's the unglaciated hill country, which features rough topography and lots of forest. In large, not great Snowy Owl habitat. Owls have been reported from most of the glaciated northern and western parts of the state, and it isn't very daring to speculate that our large Arctic visitors have occurred in ALL of those counties.

For more details on Snowy Owl sightings in Ohio, CLICK HERE.

Caterpillar talk, Worthington, February 20

Everyone likes butterflies such as this beautiful dime-sized Juniper Hairstreak, obligingly posing on your narrator's finger. Far too little thought is given to their caterpillars, however. If you would like to learn more about the magical world of butterflies, moths, and especially their caterpillar stages, come on down to the Worthington Garden Club's meeting at 7 pm next Thursday. It's free, and will take place at the Griswold Center, 777 North High Street in Worthington. I will endeavor to do justice to these most important of animals, in pictures and words. Following is a description of the talk:

Growing Caterpillars: A Tale of Birds, Plants, and Conservation

There are 3,000 or more species of moths in Ohio, and nearly 140 butterfly species. The conspicuous winged adults are the often short-lived finale of a four stage life cycle: egg, caterpillar, pupa, and adult. It’s caterpillars that make much of the natural world go around, and countless billions become food for other organisms. Without vegetation-eating caterpillars, most songbirds would go extinct, plant diversity would plummet, and our forests would fall silent. The world of caterpillars is beautifully ornate, full of trickery and chemical warfare, and both jaw-droppingly amazing and gruesomely stunning.

A Red-humped Oakworm caterpillar displays on, what else, an oak leaf. It is one of legions of caterpillars specialized for feeding on oaks.

Looking rather waspish is this Grapeleaf Skeletonizer moth. Resembling something that stings can be an effective ploy; maybe the bad guys will leave you alone.

These are the caterpillars of the aforementioned wasp mimic skeletonizer moth. In a deadly irony, they are being parasitized by tiny wasps (look closely). If you are a caterpillar, your fate is not promising. Probably 99% of them never make it to the winged stage. It has to be this way, though. Caterpillars are Nature's tube steaks, and without them we could kiss moth of our songbirds goodbye, along with many other organisms.

A ghostly goldfinch

Photo: Ian Adams

These excellent images come courtesy of Ian Adams, celebrated landscape and nature photographer, and I appreciate him allowing me to share them. Shortly after Ian put out feeders at his Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio residence, he attracted this oddity to the tubed up thistle seeds. That's a male American Goldfinch up top, still largely in its somber winter colors. It won't be too much longer, and it'll shed those bland feathers and explode into the brilliant lemony hues of a wild canary.

The lower bird is not as clearcut an identification, and could be a stumper if it were seen by itself. The fact that it consorts with goldfinches helps on two counts: guilt by association, and the fact that we can readily compare it to other normally clad members of its species.

Photo: Ian Adams

We beam in on the ghostbird, and can easily see the trademark characters of a male American Goldfinch bleeding through. This individual is leucistic (loo-kis-tik), leucism referring to a genetic anomaly that causes dark melanin pigments to become washed out and pale. I've written about leucistic birds plenty of times, and THIS ACCOUNT gives a more in-depth explanation of the phenomenon. Leucistic animals are sometimes confused with albinos, but the latter would have pink eyes and most likely be snow-white. Truly albino birds generally don't fare well, either, at least in the wild. Their feather shafts and other supporting structures tend to be weakened, and their vision can be impaired, none of which aids survival.

The prevalence of leucism is probably essentially an odds game. The more individuals in a species' population, the more likely a leucistic individual will show up. That's why "piebald" (as leucistic animals patchily blotched with white are often known) are commonly reported in abundant species such as American Robins, Red-tailed Hawks, and White-tailed Deer.

Thanks to Ian for sharing his images. I hope this goldfinch sticks around so that we can see what if anything changes as it progresses through its molt into alternate plumage. If you're in the Cuyahoga Falls area and are interested in seeing/photographing this ghostly goldfinch, flip me an email and I'll pass along Ian's contact info.

A tsunami of Snow Buntings

At first blush, this rural farmhouse may not appear to harbor what may be the most extraordinary bird feeding operation in Ohio. But indeed it does. If there is anything out there that rivals this in terms of sheer numbers, and the atypical "feeder" species involved, I am unaware of it.

I visited this Delaware County residence yesterday, after being tipped off to the amazing assemblage of birds by Dick Miller, whose sister and brother-in-law, Mike and Becky Jordan, reside in the home. Mike and Becky have been very gracious in extending their hospitality to visitors, including your narrator, which is much appreciated!

I'm not going to post their address on the Internet, but Mike and Becky do welcome birders who would like to witness the phenomenon that unfolds in the following photos. If you would like to visit, just send me an email at: jimmccormac35@gmail.com, and I'll pass along the pertinent information.

I arrived at 8:30 yesterday morning, and this was the very first of over 2,200 images that I made during my 3.5 hour stay. Nearly all of the birds swirling about in the image are Snow Buntings! The large trees are silver maples, and dozens of buntings adorn the summits of the trees as well. As soon as I turned onto the Jordan's road, nearly a half-mile from their home, I saw the birds. Thousands of buntings, larks, and longspurs forming a great undulating mass.

It was a frosty 2 degrees F upon arrival, warming only to 16 F by my departure. Observing and photographing this spectacular flock of birds was well worth lying in the icy snow, and enduring the Arctic temperatures.

A blizzard of buntings nearly obscures the front of Mike and Becky's house. I found it impossible to get what I would feel confident was an accurate estimate of the number of birds visiting their yard. Even when the feeding areas were jammed with birds, scores and scores of others were out in the surrounding fields. Somewhere between 3,500 and 5,000 Snow Bunting, Horned Larks, and Lapland Longspurs would probably be a reasonable guesstimate.

Don't you wish your driveway looked like this! Well, if you are into birds, you probably would. Scattered flocks form where Mike has scattered his magical ingredient: cracked corn. Deep snow cover interlaced with ice has made for tough foraging in the fields, and the birds have found the corn an irresistible lure. Mike basically rings his house with corn scatterings: driveway, backyard, garden, front yard. The end result is an utterly unbelievable concentration of birds that one seldom gets to fawn over in such numbers, and at such close quarters.

This is the stuff of which clouds of buntings, larks and longspurs are made - finely ground cracked corn! If you think your feed bill is hefty, get a load of the following numbers. Mike puts out about 50 lbs. of this stuff A DAY. He'll purchase about a ton of cracked corn (which is specially ground to his standards) over the bunting/lark/longspur season. He's been doing this for about 20 years, too.

The birds now seem to recognize Mike, and when he heads out in the morning, grain bucket in hand, they begin swarming towards the house, filling the air with rattles and whistles.

I could not get enough of this spectacle. Tidal movements of birds ebbed and flowed, swirling in and covering the drive, then suddenly exploding aloft in a loud whir of wings at some threat, real or perceived. In an instant, they'd be back, but the flock was always wary and full of nervous energy. Not because of the primate admirers, I don't believe, but due to the ever-present threat of marauding raptors: Cooper's and Sharp-shinned hawks, Northern Harrier, and American Kestrel. No raptors bagged a treat while I was there, but at least two harriers coursed by, eying the flock.

The birds were tame enough that I was able to use my 70-200 mm lens, which is lightning fast and tack sharp but requires that the photographer be close to the subjects. One reason that I tripped the shutter some 2,200 times was that I fired off extended rapid-fire burst modes, hoping to freeze the beautiful birds in flight. Most shots were discards; a few, such as this one, were keepers.

The BIG THREE of midwinter open country feeding flocks are Horned Larks, Lapland Longspurs, and Snow Buntings. All three species are in this image. The buntings are self-explanatory: brilliant white flashes adorn their wings and tail, hence one of their colloquial names, "Snowflakes". A dark-winged Horned Lark is bookended by Lapland Longspurs at the top of the image, and another lark is bottom left. Just to the right of the lower lark is another longspur, showing its white outer tail feathers.

A quartet of Snow Buntings feeds on Mike and Becky's cracked corn. These birds breed in the Arctic, and have come a long ways south to winter in Ohio. This species was easily the most numerous at the Jordan's feederscape, outnumbering each of the other species by a factor of 12, or more.

The earliest of these tough songbirds will begin to arrive at Arctic breeding locales in April, when winter still has a strong hold and conditions are harsh. One way in which they cope is to burrow into the snow at night, creating sheltered bivouacs. Mike and Becky have observed them doing just that in the adjacent fields, in order to survive subzero temperatures and brutal wind chills.

A male Lapland Longspur feasts in the front yard. The males are commencing molt from basic (winter) plumage to alternate (breeding plumage, and some were showing lots of chestnut and black. They'll brighten up considerably over the next few weeks. This is an enormously abundant bird across Arctic tundra regions. North American birds winter primarily in the Great Plains, and flocks estimated at a jaw-dropping four million birds have been reported there.

The name "longspur" stems from the greatly elongated hind claw, which can be seen in this photo.

Frequent flock mates: Lapland Longspur on the left, and a Horned Lark. These species typically walk, rather than hop, as does the bunting. That's a more efficient mode of locomotion for birds that habitually feed and otherwise spend the majority of their time on the ground. When at pause, these birds often hunch down and nearly sit on the ground. That posture is likely an adaptation to better warm their feet and legs in freezing temperatures.

Lit by the sun, a flock of Snow Buntings swirls about the tops of the big maples shown in the first two photos. Many more buntings are at rest in the upper boughs.

Treetop perching by Snow Buntings was not a behavior that I was familiar with. I've seen them tee up in scraggly saplings and bushes on occasion, but had not had the experience of watching them perch en masse in a tree 40-50 feet overhead. It did make for some neat photo ops. My car was parked under this tree, and I had left the driver's side window open. When I left, I noticed a bit of bunting guano adhering to the arm rest. I was honored, and may be one of few people who have had a Snow Bunting drop droppings INTO their car.

I will leave you with this brief video of birds swarming about the Jordan's drive. The action will probably remain strong as long as snow blankets the ground, but when it melts the birds will forsake the cracked corn donations and head back into the fields to forage.

Thanks again to Becky and Mike for their hospitality, and I'm sure that buntings/larks/longspurs thank them as well. Again, if you wish to visit, feel free to contact me for information.

Birds eating BIG THINGS!

I made this photo in 2011, at a wetland in Florida. This Great Blue Heron was wrestling with some sort of huge catfish (I think it was a catfish). We were amazed that the heron could even pick the thing up. Circumstances dictated our departure before the drama played out. I don't know if the bird ever managed to wolf that thing down.

It seems that some birds have eyes bigger than their stomachs. If potential food swims along, they just can't resist grabbing it, even if choking it down may be problematic.

Leslie Sours sent along a fabulous series of images of a Common Loon successfully capturing and swallowing an impressively large fish. I can't tell what species the victim is; if anyone knows, let us know. If I remember the story correctly, this loon was frozen into a patch of water too small to take off from, and was captured and released elsewhere in the Columbus area.

The following images document the epic struggle between the gluttonous loon and the unfortunate fish.

Photo: Leslie Sours

Photo: Leslie Sours

Photo: Leslie Sours

Photo: Leslie Sours

That oughta hold the loon over for a while! Thanks to Leslie for sharing her images!

Mothapalooza! Better hurry...

A Large Tolype (To-lip-ee), Tolype velleda, looking somewhat like a cross between a malamute and a bighorn sheep. The wide world of moths is endlessly fascinating, and full of exquisite creatures such as this tolype.

I was conferring today with Mary Ann Barnett today, who serves (quite well!) as CEO of Mothapalooza. CLICK HERE for a post I recently made about this event, and HERE to go to the event's website.

We opened Mothapalooza for registration about a week ago, and have already filled 84 of the 120 available spots. As anyone who gets involved in conference organization knows, this is an enviable spot to be in, especially as the event doesn't take place until the end of June. I must confess to being a bit surprised by this moth fervor. When we cooked up Mothapalooza I, which took place last year, and it attracted 120+ people, we all were a bit shell-shocked. But because of that experience, we weren't too surprised to see how rapidly Mothapalooza II is filling.

Anyway, I make this post as a reminder to sign on soon if you wish to make the scene. It'll be an awesome time, I guarantee you that. REGISTRATION IS HERE.

Snowy Owl update

Photo: Cheryl Erwin (near McGuffey, Hardin County, Ohio, today)

While Snowy Owl reports are slowing, I'm still regularly receiving new ones. Reports come in via the Ohio Birds Listserv, various Facebook groups, and personal messages. A recent article in Ohio Outdoor News triggered receipt of at least a half-dozen new reports, none of which would have probably made their way to the birding community. To date, we're up to at least 159 owls in 54 counties. There will definitely be more. I've heard of a number of injured birds that were taken to rehab facilities, but have not yet run down details on those birds.

An updated map is below. As always, if you know of other owls, please let me know. And of course, if anyone sees errors, omissions, numbers that need to go up, down, or whatever, please do correct me. There will always be some margin of error when trying to tally Snowy Owls, especially at certain Lake Erie locales where it is impossible to know with certainty if the same owl is being counted twice as they shift around. But I stand ready to be corrected by those who know better.

As word of the Snowy Owl irruption has spread through both traditional media and social media, an increased number of reports have come in from nonbirders. Prior to seeing a story or post about the owls, these observers didn't know if anyone would be interested or where to go to report their finds. Most of these reports have either had photos attached, or good descriptions. I am always interested in Snowy Owl reports and you can email me at: jimmccormac35@gmail.com

For more information about Snowy Owls in Ohio, and their probable source of origin, scroll down the alphabetized index of subjects on the righthand side of this page, and click on "Snowy Owl". This is certainly the largest irruption to hit Ohio in decades. The last invasion to rival this one was in the winter of 1949-50 when at least 41 birds were tallied in northeast Ohio, and an unspecified "Sizable numbers... along western Lake Erie and south to Cincinnati" (from Peterjohn, Birds of Ohio 2001). One must go back further, such as the winters of 1941-42, when perhaps 150 birds appeared in the Cleveland area alone, to find larger irruptions.

It is reasonable to assume that many more owls dot our landscape that haven't come to light. Keep your eyes open for large white objects in fields, on fence posts, telephone poles or other prominent perches in open landscapes. A few observers found their owl when it flew right in front of their vehicle. Alas, vehicles are one of the snowies' biggest downfalls, and many get Buick'ed during these irruptions. I know of at least four roadkills so far in Ohio.

To keep up on many of the current sightings, join the Ohio Birds Listserv or skim the Facebook Birding Ohio page.